New C.S. Lewis Encyclopedia

This four volume work can be pre-ordered at Amazon. My birthday's coming up...
You can read the preface here

Redeeming movies

CT Movies has listed their top 10 redeeming films of 2006, as well as a runner's up list.

Favourite Hymn #9

I Cannot Tell

I cannot tell why He Whom angels worship,
Should set His love upon the sons of men,
Or why, as Shepherd, He should seek the wanderers,
To bring them back, they know not how or when.
But this I know, that He was born of Mary
When Bethlehem’s manger was His only home,
And that He lived at Nazareth and labored,
And so the Savior, Savior of the world is come.

I cannot tell how silently He suffered,
As with His peace He graced this place of tears,
Or how His heart upon the cross was broken,
The crown of pain to three and thirty years.
But this I know, He heals the brokenhearted,
And stays our sin, and calms our lurking fear,
And lifts the burden from the heavy laden,
For yet the Savior, Savior of the world is here.

I cannot tell how He will win the nations,
How He will claim His earthly heritage,
How satisfy the needs and aspirations
Of East and West, of sinner and of sage.
But this I know, all flesh shall see His glory,
And He shall reap the harvest He has sown,
And some glad day His sun shall shine in splendor
When He the Savior, Savior of the world is known.

I cannot tell how all the lands shall worship,
When, at His bidding, every storm is stilled,
Or who can say how great the jubilation
When all the hearts of men with love are filled.
But this I know, the skies will thrill with rapture,
And myriad, myriad human voices sing,
And earth to Heaven, and Heaven to earth, will answer:
At last the Savior, Savior of the world is King!

Death in the City - Chapter Four: An Echo of the World

Here, Schaeffer examines whom Jeremiah was speaking to. It was not merely to the ordinary man on the street, but included the leaders, to kings, prophets and religious leaders anyone drawing the people away from God. His audience included even the land itself.

An example: “The princes of Judah, and the princes of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, and the priests, and all the people of the land, which passed between the parts of the calf; I will even give them into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of them that seek their life: and their dead bodies shall be for meat unto the fowls of the heaven, and to the beasts of the earth” (Jer. 34:19-20).

But his sharpest criticisms were aimed at the religious leaders who were leading the people astray. Jer. 2:8 – “The priests said not, ‘Where is the Lord?’ and they that handle the law knew me not: the pastors also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after things that do not profit.”

Just as then, so today many religious leaders are leading people astray, away from God’s truth. Many try to treat people with love by toning down the message of Scripture. Today’s leaders and yesterday’s prophets are not speaking for God. Schaeffer says they are merely “taking the social consensus of their day and speaking as though that was the Word of God”. Their message is just an echo of those in society, those whom we could call secularism’s priesthood, such as unbelieving philosophers, scientists and sociologists. They merely couch the message in theological jargon.

In previous generations, even if the culture at large was mainly deistic, one could still walk into a church and hear the truth. This is not the case anymore in many churches. What you hear today are echoes. Jer. 23:30 – “Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that steal my words every one from his neighbour.” One prophet repeats a message he heard from another prophet. The theology of today is likewise merely an echo, an echo of what “man says, what materialistic society teaches, what materialistic psychology teaches, what materialistic economics teaches, what materialistic philosophy teaches.”

Schaeffer asks, “Do you expect God to sit there and just…say, ‘Isn’t that nice?...And if such a god existed what…would be the use of having him?”

Men of today are no different from those of Jeremiah’s day. Schaeffer says, “Men today do not perhaps burn the Bible…But men destroy it in the form of exegesis; they destroy it in the way they deal with it. They destroy it by not reading it as written in normal literary form, by ignoring historical-grammatical exegesis, by changing the Bible’s own perspective of itself as propositional revelation in space and time, in history….You who call yourselves Bible-believing Christians…should be filled with wonder and amazement that men dare so treat God’s Word.”

Jesus: An Inconvenient Truth

This First Things blog post makes some observations about the pretensions a certain film director cum "biblical scholar"